SOPA-style protests reject Russian bill to blacklist websites

Child porn, extremist ideas, drug-related content would be considered illegal.

Russian-language sites are protesting a bill submitted to the lower house of Russian parliament this week. The bill would create a national registry of blacklisted sites that contain child pornography, extremist ideas, and suicide- or drug-related content. Many of the bill's opponents say Duma Bill 89417-6 (titled "On protection of children from information harmful to their health and development") is overly broad, risks becoming censorship akin to China's "Great Firewall," and does not include an adequate appeals process in case a site is wrongfully taken down.

Wikimedia's Russian-language branch, LiveJournal, Russian search engine Yandex, and Russian social network vKontakte all protested the bill on Tuesday by shutting down or posting notices on their homepages explaining why the bill was dangerous to their sites. Most sites fear that the broad language in the bill would lead to government blacklisting if a site simply hosted a link to illegal content, or if a single user posted illegal content that was not discovered in time.

The bill would potentially require ISPs and Web hosts to block the blacklisted sites, "under threat of liability or even being added to the blacklist itself,” the Center for Democracy and Technology reports. RIA Novosti, one of Russia's largest state-run news outlets, suggests that the bill has some support in all four-party factions in the Duma, and would appoint a federal agency to keep the blacklist and add violators to it.

Banning websites is not unheard of in Russia either. "The Justice Ministry is already running a blacklist of extremist materials banned by courts, which comprises websites and offline publications, as well as musical recordings and leaflets," RIA Novosti reports. "The list currently has 1,199 entries."

Ultimately, this bill is different from SOPA in that it would target illegal content rather than pirated intellectual property. The approach to banning content seems to be cast with a similarly broad net however. The bill is still under consideration, and Russia's Presidential Human Rights Council came out sharply against it today. The organization said it was "crucial to stop the introduction of censorship on the RuNet."

There are no any instruments in "Presidential Human Rights Council" to stop any Duma or President bills. It's just some kind of talk-show for folks, to keep political regime outfit more fancy.

@saltcadet:"I didn't realize that Russians have to deal with a blacklist already. "

Yes, we have that silly list, but it was (and still) difficult to force ISP or site to block content due holes in law and gap between real word reality and law. This list is filled by court decisions. E.g. there is stupid decision in it to ban certain youtube video links. Obviously, it is impossible in real world without blocking access to whole youtube services and it was never blocked as result. Other decision is to block files with name like sdfsdfsdf.jpg (found in cache of some accused person). Pretty idiotic.

I don't think it's normal to maintain blacklist (interested person will find way to it anyway), but some materials in it really may deserve access limitation (e.g. related to racism), although others are questionable.

However, Bill 89417-6 is a completely different matter. According to it, not court, but some government organization will gain privilege to update this list. Without any court process (although our courts are keen to keep government point of view, but it is still possible to argue in it and appeal to higher courts) some resource, e.g. search engine, may be banned just cause it indexed some new site with "harmful information" and provided it to end user in a search results. There were several draconian bills already, which made public protests difficult. Honestly, it is clear that discussed bill leads to censorship. At least part of the society finds this new bill fitting excellent to sequence of actions to block criticism of government.

...so I'm guessing sites discussing euthanasia and safe drug use will be effectively banned now? Expect to see an increase in messy suicides, drug overdoses and infection rates for blood-borne diseases in Russia. And don't get me started on "extremist ideas" -in Russia that is likely to end up being used as a stick to bash anyone who criticises Putin online, including fairly mainstream journalism. Publishing allegations of government corruption? -Sorry mate, you now run an "extremist" site.

I was coughing when I saw the 'extremist ideas' thing. Who gets to decide what is an extremist idea? As to drugs, it's simply time to legalize them and move on. The only thing that drug prohibition has done is get us more and more violence related to it.

It's also against human rights to dictate to someone what they can put into their own body, so there is another issue.

There are a few loopholes Ars seems to have missed. A new government agency will be able to add to the blacklist. The criteria a court can use to order content blocked include: any other information a court has forbidden to propagate in Russia (note the circular reasoning).

You can pretty much be sure that any information control laws justified by "the protection of children" will be among the most over-bearable, cretinous, and repressive imaginable. Even instances of verbiage about enhancing "moral character" come second to the protection of children ruse.